


If You Care For Me

by Covenmouse



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Covenmouse/pseuds/Covenmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aveline sends Anders to High Town to take care of a situation in Hawke’s absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Care For Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Satine86](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Satine86/gifts).



The last of the patients scuttled out the left hand door as the guard captain entered from the right. She still made no attempt to disguise herself when she came down here--which, thankfully, wasn’t often. Anders sighed. Aveline could never seem to wrap her head about there being places in Kirkwall where the Guard just wasn’t welcome. Some part of him understood her reluctance to admit that, and the rest of him was just annoyed. This safe haven was needed for the city, whether or not Aveline wanted to admit it, and he didn’t much care for the disruption. Least of all when it did not include Hawke.

“Anders,” she said, with her usual curtness. He glanced up to see that she’d stopped a few feet from the bloody table he was cleaning, product of an unsuccessful attempt to finish severing the leg of man who’d had it all but cut off during a mining incident. It’d been a wonder he hadn’t bled out before they’d gotten him here, and not even magic had been able to seal the arteries in time. The leg was still there, lying at the foot of the table, and he wondered briefly what Aveline thought of him, here, with all of this. 

Her lips thinned a little as her eyes glanced the mess over, but she nodded to him when she caught him looking. 

“What is it, Guard-Captain?”

And there was that hurt look, ghosting briefly over her face and as quickly replaced by boredom and...sadness? Exhaustion, more likely. These days she kept as long hours as he did, what with the Viscount dead and the Templars attempting to take the city out from under the few officials that remained. Yet another reason in the long list of why this woman should be on his side, and yet...

As quickly as the rage welled inside of him he squashed it again, swallowing it like a lump of hard tack, and returned to patiently scrubbing the filth from the table. 

“There’s a slight disturbance up in High Town. I thought you might look into it for me.”

He dropped the rag on the table. “Isn’t that what your guard is for.”

“They’re busy.” Aveline caught his eye when he looked up. “Everyone seems to be busy. I wouldn’t have asked, otherwise. It isn’t something I should get involved in.”

Which only meant one thing.

Helena agreed to finish the cleaning and to dispose of the leg--Anders prayed she wouldn’t feed it to the rats, but if there was one sure way to get rid of something in Darktown...--and in no time at all he was standing in the upper courts of High Town before a door he never entered alone. Or wanted to enter. Ever. It was dark, and damp, and smelled atrociously. 

It was quite a feat to put off someone who lived in a sewer, but the elf had managed. 

From Aveline’s tone, Anders had expected to find a bloody trail indicating Fenris had finally gone completely ‘round the bend, the way Fenris always implied Anders himself would. At the very least he’d thought there’d be the deliciously black-mail worthy sight of a naked, drunken elf assaulting the hapless idiots that populated Kirkwall’s wealthier districts. 

There was a drunken elf, but he was neither naked nor assaulting anything other than the ears of his neighbors and several wine bottles. Anders kicked the door closed behind him with one heel, and moved slowly into the foyer. 

Fenris lay sprawled about midway up the middle staircase, surrounded by bottles of that wine he never seemed to run out of. He was gazing, as broodingly as he always did, into the bottom of the latest bottle. Singing to it.

Anders stopped. 

He really thought he’d seen the last of things Fenris could surprise him with when the elf had cracked a smile two years prior. That single expression was probably first and only of it’s kind, sure, but the fact that it had existed seemed to Anders the only proof of the Maker’s existence he’d ever need. It wasn’t that he was particularly invested in whether or not Fenris could smile, of course. More that the smile had been triggered by one of Varric’s stories, rather than the sort of thing Fenris usually found enjoyable...such as the murdering of mages. 

Surely, Anders had thought, that had been the pinnacle of elven surprises. 

He was wrong, though. Fenris wasn’t just singing--he was singing well. A love song. Or at least, Anders thought it might be a love song. He could only make out a few of the words here and there, between the drunken slurs and the fact that half of it was in Tevinter. He recognized a few lines, though: “Your looks are laughable,” “are you smart,” “your mouth’s a little weak.” 

The only line which synced appropriately to the lovey-dovey tune was “Don’t change a thing for me,” but Anders wasn’t sure he’d heard that one right.

Whatever it was, Fenris was belting it out like the bottle of his affection were a thousand miles away and deaf. The latter was probably a sound assumption, though, given that objects rarely have ears. Then the song ended, and the bottle went hurtling into a thousand pieces.

“Love is so fleeting,” Anders said.

“You can say that again,” said Fenris. He picked another bottle and sloshed its contents before taking a swig. “Who let you in?”

“The door. Didn’t even try to stop me. You might have to fire it.”

Fenris eyed the door as though he were seriously considering just that, then up again with the bottle. A twinge of worry made Anders frown. 

He’d known for several years that Fenris was a heavy drinker. The elf had never been shy of a bottle, in public or private if what Hawke’s drifts and silences had implied were true. But Anders had never been in a position to witness the private displays before. A handful of rowdy nights in the Hanged Man were no comparison. Now that he knew what to look for the decimation of wine bottles lined the edges of the room in twinkling, dangerous piles. And Fenris was always barefoot.

“Aveline sent me,” Anders confessed as he skirted the edge of a few particularly sharp looking pieces and ascended the first flight of stairs. “Your neighbors are beginning to suspect that the ghost in this manner was either quite the wino in life, or is still very much alive...and a wino.”

An easy roll of Fenris’ shoulders and another tip of the bottle was all the answer he received. Anders sighed. 

“You’re killing yourself.”

“Really?” Fenris laughed that same, dry-edged laugh Anders had heard time and time again, though usually at something Hawke had said. It was the sort of laugh that had a self deprecating tone to it, like the ones he’d often hear from Mages in the circle. It never failed to raise the bile in his throat. As much as he hated Fenris, he felt as guilty for it. Fenris was not so unlike the very people he was trying to help--if only the fool would recognize that. 

Then Fenris continued, “What, precisely, do I have to live for?”

Anders leaned against the wall, looking up the short flight to where the elf laid sprawled, and tried to find some words in his suddenly blank mind. What indeed? He’d heard his share of suicidal rants, both drunken and sober, from half the people in Dark Town, especially his fellow Apostates. With them there was always something he could find, or at least some platitudes that occasionally worked where all else failed. He doubted that would go over too well with Fenris, no matter how intoxicated.

“Myself,” Fenris answered for him. Once again the elf was staring at his bottle. “That’s what I’ve been fighting for, isn’t it? Myself.” 

Yes. Definitely stepping into things Anders should not be talking about with a drunken bruiser, unaided, in the middle of the night, in High Town. Not that he was afraid of Fenris, but he was quite bothered by the idea of pissing off a certain Guard-Captain by doing the exact opposite of the thing she’d asked of him. They weren’t exactly friends in the most traditional sense of the word, but Aveline had managed to keep him and his out of a few tighter spots over the years. He owed her at least this much.

Fenris was humming that song again, though not quite so loudly as before, and sloshing his wine in time. “No, I don’t want to die,” he muttered against the rim of it. A swallow. 

It was quite the effort not to knock the bottle from his hands. In another place, Anders would surely be knighted for having such patience. “Then get rid of the damned bottle.”

The elf favoured him with a particularly dirty scowl. “You sound just like her.”

Anders snorted. “And here I thought you listened to her. I’m sorry to know you never listen to reason--I thought you only did that to spite me.”

“Of course you’re on her side,” Fenris scoffed. “I should’ve known. You’ve been sniffing at her heels since the day we met you.”

“You’re one to talk,” Anders snapped. 

“Vice versa.” The bottle went up again. “She chased me, I’ll have you know. Caught me, too.”

Fenris may as well have stabbed him with a knife coated in sea salt. The very idea that Hawke would stoop so low as to dally with this unwashed, wine-addled heathen was just...he wanted to spit. Or punch him. It didn’t matter that Anders had long since known it was true, or that it had been just about three years ago and not once since. Not once that he knew about, anyway.

Once again Fenris had begun to hum, and what it was about finally clicked.

“Last I heard you two were over,” he shot back. “You left. Or did she just let you say that to save face?”

Then he on his back on the first landing, with a very angry, very drunk, very glowy elf squatting over him with the front of his robes clenched in one fist. “Mock me one more time, mage,” he breathed. 

And here they were at the end that Anders had always known would come. He could feel the fire burning at his finger tips, as surely as the sour stench of Fenris’ breath clogged his nostrils and throat. Would a fireball even hit Fenris in this stage? He’d seen the Lyrium Ghost in combat, and in other more...direct situations. 

“Go ahead,” Anders said with a surety he did not feel. “I always knew you were a savage. Nothing more than a bloodthirsty dog.”

The snarl that crossed Fenris’ lips was indeed feral, the very picture of a wild animal caged far too long. For a moment that glow brightened, Fenris’ skin began to turn blue and Anders swore he could see the railing of the staircase through the man’s head.

Then, just as suddenly, his head smacked again on the landing and he was left with nothing more than spots of light floating through his vision.

A wine bottle exploded against the wall behind him.

“Get out.”

Anders scrambled to his feet and retrieved his staff from where it’d fallen beside him. Fenris was already gone, slunk away into his ruined quarters. For a moment Anders considered the pile of wine bottles left behind. How many had been emptied before he’d gotten there? Could Fenris be trusted to sleep it safely off?

Did he even care?

Hawke would care. 

His stomach rolled at the thought, but it was true. If Fenris died, especially in such a revolting manner, Hawke would care. She’d already lost so many people.

Fuck.

Steeling himself, Anders picked his way through the collection of glass and up to the bedroom door. Fenris was inside, glowering at the low burning fire. A pitcher of water was in the back corner, set on a wobbly nightstand beside the bed. Anders salvaged a passably clean glass from the table and filled it with water. He placed it on the arm of Fenris’ chair and stood there until the elf began to sip at it. Then, in the strange, easy silence that had formed between them, he sat in the only other chair to wait.


End file.
